Design Exorcism - Beats of Rage

So I just got back from a busy work week of extra shifts, scarfed down a bowl of fries, a can of sardines and a bag of popcorn for dinner, and am listening to a LOT of MJ. Why you ask? Well my housemate and coworker Dufferton was talking about the martial arts in The Raid, which made me think of the hallway scene in Old Boy, which wired to the part of my brain that's been on a Streets of Rage kick so uhhh here we are. What my brain thinks that kind of RPG might look like:

Beat It

Alright so the basics. You have two pools of dice to pull from on a combat turn: Your Fury (measured in d6s) and your Clarity (measured in d4s). Lets say the average character has 8 Fury and 4 Clarity. During a combat round you'll be faced up against a bunch of goons, here's an example:

Puncher (3 HP - Resilient: This unit must be KOed in one attack or regains all HP - d3 Power)

Clubber (6 HP - Reduces all incoming damage by 2 - d6 Power)

Cutter (4 HP - Resilient: This unit must be KOed in one attack or regains all HP - 2d6 Power)

Shotgunner (6 HP - 2d6+2 Power - Attack Hits All Players)

Lets say there's 4 Punchers, 2 Clubbers, 1 Cutter and 1 Shotgunner - And let's say we have only a single player.

During your turn you can target a single enemy and use up your Rage 1-for-1 to roll that many d6s worth of Damage to a single target. So let's say we want to take down a puncher and use up 1 Rage, roll a 4 and now the puncher is down! Next you pass your turn to an ally until each other ally has acted once, then it rolls back to you! "Huh" you say "When do the enemies go" - we'll get to that. 

Since we only have one Player here it rotates right back to them and they still have 7 Fury and 4 Clarity (and uhh lets say 14 HP). The Players keep going until they decide to end the round or run out of Fury dice. Alright simple enough, we target another Puncher and roll, OH NO! A 2!?! 

The Puncher loses 2 HP (which doesn't kill it so it's back to 4 HP) and since you were unable to KO him he now gets an immediate retaliation attack (roll its power) - The Puncher rolls 3 and we lose 3 HP! Ouch! But wait ~ We can use Clarity when we're being attacked to reduce incoming DMG. We use 1 Clarity and roll a 4! Awesome! No harm done! We're at 6 Fury and 3 Clarity.

Let's get that Puncher back and roll 2 Fury this time to secure the KO - We roll a 2 and a 4! Awesome!! But wait, our character role (The Dragon) has a Dragon Kick Combo he can use if we roll all evens on 2 or more dice!

[[Dragon Kick : IF you roll all EVENS on 2+ Fury Dice in an Attack THEN you can split damage between Targets equal to the number of dice you rolled]]

Sweet! Let's split that 6 DMG between 2 Punchers and take two of them out! 

4 Fury left... Let's Target that Cutter next! We roll 2 Fury again and roll... Oh no a 1 and 2... This Fury will be all but wasted if this Attack doesn't go over 4... No worries though! We can add Clarity to a DMG roll after we roll the Attack! We roll the d4 and get 4! ... a bit overkill but we'll take it.

Hmmm 2 Fury and 2 Clarity left. And there's still a Puncher, a Clubber and a Shotgunner on the field. Say what happens when we run out of Fury dice?

Well then the round moves to the Enemy turn and each Enemy gets to attack a Player using their Power. Ouch! Don't worry, you can spend any left over Clarity to negate this DMG like usual. After that the Round closes and Fury and Clarity refill (with some exceptions), and it's back to the player's turn!

What's the exceptions? Well you see something unique happens when you run out of Clarity. At this point you enter a RAGE state. Each class has its own unique Rage Bonus, but nearly all of them maintain one rule: You no longer regenerate Clarity for the rest of the combat. Instead, your Clarity [d4s] enters your Fury pool and can only be used for offense. 

Hmmmm better save that Clarity then.

Anyways I think you get the vibes of Combat. It's a rough proof of concept, but one that's proven fun in limited tests! It's a big push your luck game with light dice combos. An alternative idea for combos is that after each attack your Fury gets stored in a "meter" for that round with each dice value being retained (in this instance our Meter would be "4, 2, 2, 4, 1, 2" - Clarity never enters the Meter). You can spend number combos from the Meter to do a "Combo" (eg maybe 1,2,3,4 is a Combo). At the end of the combat round you can choose to either keep your Fury in your Meter or Recharge it. Yeah. That seems neat!

Off the Wall

So what would Streets of Rage be like without random pipes and knives that you can pick up off the ground? Easy-peasy, we have some of our enemies drop items in the form of dice! Pick up and swing that pipe for an extra d8 into your attack roll (or defense roll!) Each item has limited uses (maybe 3 dice worth?) so use them wisely! You also only hold one weapon at a time - Maybe each weapon has some additional special listed on the character sheet? (Ex; when you pick up a pipe it says that any attack with the pipe hits 2 enemies instead of 1)

But why stop at pipes? The field could start with a "Bike" token that you can use up to add d12 to one attack, Kiryu style.  

Maybe there's tokens (trash cans, crates, etc) on the field with 2 HP that when destroyed drop a random item - Including healing items (can't forget the trash turkeys) - These would probably be an immediate + 2+d6 HP to a single ally or yourself. 

Human Nature

Alright lets put some RPing nonsense in this game to placate the folks who get uppity about too much board game in their gambling doll house. You have uhhh... 3 stats?

Smooth, Move, Groove and Prove. Shit, that's 4.

Smooth covers stealth, tech and lying.

Move covers acrobatics, climbing and acting swiftly.

Groove covers dancing and general people skills.

Prove covers acts of might, bravery and machismo.

Take a -1, 1, 1 and 2. This equates to how many d4s you roll on a skill check. Negative means roll 2 take the lowest. E-Z. You can combine up to 2 Skills for a given Skill check (or may be required to). Skill Checks have a Difficulty Number, meets it beats it. Simple right? WRONG.

Between fights you similarly have your same pool of Clarity and Fury (however this doesn't reset until you rest or start another fight). During any one Skill Check you may use up to 2 dice from these pools, with two important caveats:

1) If you roll a 6 on any Fury dice this creates a complication because you did the thing too well or too forcefully (You break open the door loudly, you break the jaw of the goon you were grilling for info, you boogie too hard and now have a boogie rival).

2) If you run out of Clarity Dice between fights you'll still enter a Rage. Each class has some unique advice for their Rage outside of combat and the complications it presents.

Another Part Of Me

OK OK so we've got the bare bones of a neat crowd combat system and RP mechanics for roided up agitated heroes. So here's the ideas I had for classes:

The Dragon [14 HP] - This is your Axel, your Terry Bogard, heck even your Ryu. Maybe the default Dragon is called Guy. The Dragon has a bunch of basic combos (throwing energy and dragon punches etc) and a serious catch to their Rage - Once they're in Rage mode they go from KOing opponents to outright killing them. Gotta keep your Rage in check... except that when you're in Rage you also get to adjust the dice that go into your Meter by 1 each time you attack.

The Besties [12 HP] - The Besties are technically 2 characters who are best friends. These are the Double Dragons, the River City Girls, Castle Cr- actually that last one doesn't really work. The defaults are two school girls named Rein and Claire. The Besties manage their Fury/Clarity a bit differently. Instead of having 8F/4C they have 6F/6C, BUT they can also use Fury to help block attacks (Max 1 Fury per Block). This makes them incredibly durable, and able to partially counteract the biggest negative of Rage. Speaking of, when in a Rage the Besties deal back the full damage they take to their opponent! ... And out of combat when they're in a Rage the Besties start arguing with each other...

The Blaze [8 HP] - The Blaze is a glass canon, weaving fire through goons like a chef weaves veggies through a stir fry. The Blaze has 7F/3C, BUT their Clarity always rolls 4s. When in a Rage, all their powers are imbued with fire, giving +2 to each Attack. This isn't something they can turn off if they're in a Rage out of combat. Fire hands can be... tricky to work with.

The Brick Shithouse [16 HP] - An absolute hamburger of a character. With pecs that big you should run for Mayor. Like the Dragon, The Brick Shithouse has 8F/4C, but unlike the Dragon, they won't enter a Rage when they run out of Clarity ((during combat only)). Instead they enter a Rage when they hit half HP. At this point all incoming damage to them takes a -2 Penalty (to a minimum of 1 DMG). Narratively if they enter a Rage the Brick Shithouse is incredibly skilled at keeping their composure... They just shut down verbally and have to do a lot of box breathing... I think we've all been there really.

Are these balanced? Have I rigorously tested any of this? Hell if I know.

The Way You Make Me Feel

So why am I not making this into a game? I actually might TBH this sounds kinda fun and I've been in vaguely inspired by whatever Zenless Zone Zero is cooking - Well I mostly made this little experiment to prove a point. That combat and mechanics in a game can be about feel. My friend described wanting to run something like the martial arts in The Raid in something like Boot Hill. Upon further reflection that might be dope! (Though honestly I think Cyberpunk 2020 would be an even greater candidate for that). For whatever reason though, my mind immediately jumped to the hallway fight in Old Boy which I don't think either system would be ideal for. Now I'm not saying what I just made would be ideal either, but it has a kind of flow and kinetic weight. One vs 10 is something we rarely get to see done like this in Roleplaying games, and I'm pretty happy with how I've adapted a Streets of Rage / Hotline Miami-esc gameplay loop into a tabletop game. Damn there should be more combo stuff though...